I mean, really. That’s a bit out-of-bounds, isn’t it? Well we’re calling Johnny Cochran, just to be safe.

…

Dead? Oh hamburgers.

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BRK Legal Team Wonder-Powers, Activate!

KABLOOIE

I could send email via Gmail, but not through Gmail to dphowell.com. I could receive email via either path.

So I got on live chat with a hostmonster rep:

Dude, I can’t send email from Google through my hostmonster account. Did you crazy kids change my SMTP server name?

“Yes. (Hey Marty! The guy guessed it! Gimme my $20!)”

I KNEW IT!!!

“Your new SMTP host is ____________.”

Thank you!

/fixes the settings in Gmail

/sends email

/new crash error message

HEY!!!

“What?”

IT STILL NO WORKIE-DAH!

“Are you using SSL?”

Ummmm… yes.

“Change that.”

No SSL?

“No SSL.”

/changed

“And make the port 110.”

/checks port list

I NO CAN 110!

“No?”

NO!

“Can you 25?”

/checks

Yes. I can 25.

“So 25.”

/25s

IT’S WORKING! PRAISE ELUNE!

“Hostmonster just installed new SSL certificates today. Wait a few days for Google to accept our new certs and try SSL authentication again.”

Will do.

“Foshizzle.”

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Tech Talk

Post Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/dphowell

Comments Fee: http://feeds.feedburner.com/brain_comments

How do I fix the buttons in the header? No idea. I think I found the area that needs work:

Do I just change those function calls to text? I have no clue. Your ideas are totally welcome.

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My Feeds Updated/Borked

What is going on here? How do I fix it? It doesn’t seem to be hurting anything, but I hate seeing error messages. I have replaced that file numerous times but nothing seems to fix the errors. Any ideas?

Awesome

From a comment left by Bristal, I just thought this was incredibly well-written and wanted to make sure everybody got a chance to appreciate it.

“On a related note, I drove through Starbucks this weekend, which I only do about once a month. I typically get a mocha since I go so rarely, but they’ve been tasting too chocolatey and sweet lately. So I started ordering an “easy” mocha and they seem to look at me like I was a whack-job although I found that term online for a mocha with less chocolate.

“Aaaaaanyway there was no line and I hadn’t really thought carefully about what I wanted and I didn’t really want to get the awkward pause about the “easy mocha” and before I knew what was happening I said “a tall raspberry latte, please”.

“I swear to God it was like it came out of Linda Blair. When I drove up I was a bit freaked wondering where that came from, but it was just so…natural or something. I’ve never had one or even seriously considered trying one despite your mildly obsessive penchant. You know how sometimes you drive a different way somewhere that you go every day but didn’t really set out to drive a different way, it just kind of happened and you felt really good and kind of like you’re just riding a cosmic wave or something? Like that.

“And I liked it. Quite a bit.

“But I didn’t tell my wife.”

Your wife should not only forgive you, but genuflect in your most holy direction.

Hot Dog

Here Puppy! Cmere Quattro! Well hi! Hi puppy! You want to lie down? OK, this is a king-sized bed, there’s lots of… there’s lots of… Puppy, lie down but not on me. No, not there. I said no. No, Puppy, lie down over there. Puppy! PUPPY! HEY!

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Help, Awesome, and Hot Dog

The 100lb Puppy of Love demands this post work.

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From the iPhone

So sayth TJ, so it has been done.

The problem is thus: most of the stuff I want to write about, I’m not permitted to write about. When 99% of your life is X and Y, and you cannot write about X and Y, it’s very hard to find the time and desire to write about the 1% of of your life, Z, that you can write about.

Do you want to hear about how my mother-in-law took my bucket-o-cat-cr@p and put it out in the rain?

Do you want to hear about how my front tires have become exceptionally loud?

Do you want to hear about my new wall at my office?

Do you want to hear about how I’m becoming a pretty good VMWare-wrangler?

Do you want to hear about how my son is loving being “goalie” as we play water polo with a blow-up basket ball hoop in the pool?

Or how I’ve saved $20 in water by not using a dishwasher for a month?

My two-month non-WoW anniversary is approaching.

Netflix over the Internet is fantastic, except the selection both sucks and blows.

Ratshag is cuddly, but I didn’t cuddle; quit asking.

Should I discuss my favorite iPhone apps?

I need a better iPhone case but I won’t spend as much on the case as I did on the iPhone.

I need a second iPhone USB cable for work as the iPhone battery is, in a word, horrible stinky nasty-poo.

OK, here’s a quick story:

We got a part-time Linux sysadmin to come to our software development lab to help out the full-time sysadmin. The new guy is pretty great, even helped me with a special script that eliminates about thirty-minutes of work when I’m running four virtual machines at the same time. So the programmers, test engineers, and some QA and CM flunkies were discussing how we needed to tell everybody how awesome he was so he’d get to stick around. I had to set them straight.

“Wrong path, children. That’s not how one keeps quality people from being poached by the rest of the company. Spread the work high and low that Chester (nhrn) is a noob, a goober, and hardly worth the air he breathes and the heat his body generates. Ruin his good name, and only then will he not be a target for some manager to try to steal from us.”

They grew quiet, and then nodded their heads. For the rest of the day, we besmirched the poor man’s name to all who came into the lab, including developers from other companies, just to make sure they didn’t get any bright ideas.

Some day, when all the cr@p is behind me, I might be able to write about the stuff I want to write about, we’ll see. But for the time being, I’m going to try not to be boring. Instead of being boring, I’m just going to shut the heck up. I’ll write what I can, when I can, but the time between posts could be excessive. I apologize, but I gotta do what I gotta do.

Hope you can wait this out with me.

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A WrapUp

You bore people to tears.

You need to do a podcast!

You need some stuff:

• a USB microphone
• a computer
• sound-recording software
• compression software

If you own a Mac, you have all this stuff already in the form of your built-in microphone and Garageband. If you own a PC, I feel for ya.

Talk. Babble your heart out. Add music or soundtracks or whatever. Mix it if ya got it.

Export the file to MP3. Why MP3? ’cause if you don’t, people will go nuts. I started out using the default iTunes format and my audience had a cow about it.

Now comes the hardest part: Distribution.

If you want to allow people to download the MP3, you have to upload it somewhere. Once you’ve uploaded it, make sure you’re not going to get hosed with download/bandwidth charges. I used my Hostmonster server space with my 6TB of bandwidth and never had a problem; 3TB was my monthly average.

If you want to stream the MP3 in your blog, the easiest way I found to do that was with the Google Audio Widget. You chunk your MP3′s URL into the code-builder website and you get a blob of HTML that you use in a WordPress text widget.

If you want to get your podcast on iTunes or someone’s portable MP3-player, you’re gonna need a Podcast Feed.

What the {expletive deleted} is a Podcast Feed? It’s a text file, baby, that’s all.

I named my file “podcast.xml”. Wanna download my file? Right-click here and choose Save Link As.

How do you make your own podcast.xml file? Well, the fastest way is to get a podcast feed generation program. I used Podcast Maker for a while, until I understood how the xml file works. Basically, once you have built the file, the only part that changes is the item-section. In my picture-example, I’ve cut out the first through the thirteenth episodes so the picture wasn’t ten miles long, but in the real file, there are fifteen item-sections, one for each episode.

Every time you make a new episode of your podcast, a new item-section is added. To update your podcast.xml file, just copy/paste your an item-section as a new item-section and put it at the top of all the item-sections. Episode 16 would go above my Episode 15, for example. Update the data in the section as it pertains to your new MP3: file size, title, descriptions, recording length, etc. Save the file and upload it to your server, probably the same server that you’re using to store your collection of podcast episodes.

Did you make a good podcast.xml file? The way to find out is to use a feed validator. I used Feed Validator to test my xml file. If you have any problems, this will find it.

Once you have all the kinks worked out of your xml file, you can do two things with it:

• Allow readers to subscribe to the feed directly, (what non-iPod users are going to do)
• Allow the iTunes store to distribute your podcast.

Subscribing to a podcast feed is just like subscribing to an RSS feed; put a hyperlink to the podcast.xml file on a widget or in a post and BAM, it’s done.

Getting your podcast into the iTunes store is a little more complex. Read all this, for this is your iTunes Podcast Bible. Don’t think you have to memorize it; if you use my podcast.xml file as a template, most of your tech-questions should be answered.

To Recap:

You made an MP3 file of your podcast.

You uploaded it somewhere that people can download it.

You made a podcast.xml file with which people and iTunes can subscribe to your podcast.

Finally, make a blog post announcing your podcast and every subsequent episode. Sounds like a lot of work, yes? Don’t worry…

It’s more.

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So You Wanna Do a Podcast

I had a lot of “requests” before I shut down my WoW-Blog: another shirt-sale, another movie, one last gnaked gnome race, etc. While I can’t answer everything, I can try to answer the question of what it takes to be a successful WoW-blogger.

Do Be One Of These Things:

• Be clever.
• Be funny.
• Be original.
• Be informative.

You don’t have to be more than one, but you’ve got to be at least one. If you can write a funny WoW-blog about your forty-five level-two alts, you’ll be successful. If you write about nothing but loot-drops for your level eighty Gladiator rogue, you won’t be. Toon-accomplishments mean nothing if the blog isn’t clever, funny, original, or informative.

Do Steal, But Don’t Steal

There’s a difference between stealing an idea and stealing content. If you want to make a hunter-blog that focuses on movies for the hunter-novice, go for it. Just because I did something doesn’t mean you can’t too. But don’t write a post about “this really cool hunter-blog and here’s an embed of his latest movie”. See the difference?

Do Stay Focused

Pick your niche and stay there. You can have a BIG NICHE if you want, but you’d better keep it clean and pay your taxes on it.

Greedy Goblin talks about nothing but gold, but does a d@mn fine job. Out of Mana talks about warlocks and PvP and composing rap songs into WoW-lyrics and the proper way to purchase hair-extensions and life as a person who cannot ride a roller-coaster without an adult companion. OOM is a bigger niche than GG, but because she can fill up her niche, her blog works beautifully.

There are some WoW-Bloggers – you know who you are – who will write posts about their alts, their guild-chats, their quest-loot, someone else’s cute pictures, etc., and meander from day to day. They lose their readers by not focusing.

Don’t Be BRK

Steal from BRK’s ideas, cover the topics he covered, make movies, do loot-analysis, abuse your guildies in chat and then post the screenshots. But don’t make your goal to be “the next BRK”. Explore being You; you’ll have a lot more fun.

Do Get a TJ

You can’t have mine; she’s taken. But having an objective and intelligent person help you develop ideas and provide technical expertise is worth more than you can imagine. Finding a “yes-man” or “yes-woman” is worthless; make sure your editor is capable — if not focused — on criticizing your work.

Do Develop Your Shtick

You don’t have to stick with your original shtick, but once you find your voice, allow your audience to get comfortable with it. Ratshag has his shtick down better than any other WoW-blogger out there. Can you read something from Galertruby without doubling over with laughter?

Don’t Steal Shtick

At one time, a plethora of BigRed____ blogs erupted. They died quickly, not because the authors gave up on them, but because people understood that a stolen shtick stinks.

BigRedSpiritBeast? No.
Ferociously Inspired? Yes.

OutOfRage? No.
RedMeansGo? Yes.

The Egotistical Shaman? No.
Four Totems is Your Funeral? Yes.

Balance4Life? No.
BadBirdie? Yes.

Blessing of Might? No.
FourPaladinsInTheRaidAndNobodySpec’dKings? Long, but Yes.

Don’t Be MMO-Champion or WoWHead

Nobody does beta and patch data-mining better than these guys. Unless you can consistently do a better job then they do, don’t bother posting patch notes or blue posts without providing your own commentary at the same time. There are already seventeen WoW-blogs that post the same things that MMO-C and WH do, why would you want to be the eighteenth?

Don’t Let Blogging Become Work

As soon as you dread sitting down to the keyboard, your blog is in jeopardy. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that, unless you post every day, readers are going to mutiny. Blogging should be fun, regardless of the topic or your writing style.

Don’t Listen to WoW-Bloggers

WoW-Bloggers are generally cruel, smelly, malnourished muffin-heads, and notorious for giving bad advice. Do what you want; it’s your stinkin’ blog for cryin’ out loud.

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The Do’s and Don’ts of Being a WoW Blogger

First things first, this is not a Warcraft-blog. We may mention WoW, but that’s not the thrust here. This is about everything in my life that’s important: God, family, love, writing, and being a loud-mouthed schnook.

The favicon? That’s the only hold-over from the old place. I’m allowed a little sentimentality, yes?

I’m noticing that I’m having a difficult time switching from We to I. Bear with me; it’ll happen.

There’s not going to be any schedule, no daily-post, no spending hours and hours working on material. I might use this place as a sounding board for my book, though, so be warned. There’s lots to do still, especially links and pictures and knick-knacks. Again, please be patient as I make this place into a home.

So here we go!

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Welcome